Yahoo continues shopping spree, buys Xobni contact management company
Yahoo continues with high profile purchases, acquires "smart" email service Xobni for $30 million.
Yahoo has bought Xobni to improve Yahoo! Mail and other related applications. However the buyout has resulted in some of Xobni’s products being shut down. The company has released a FAQ stating that it plans to continue supporting its contact management tools for Outlook, but support for other platforms may expire on 2nd July, 2014.
“Not to worry — we aren’t pulling the rug out from under you. If you’re using a Xobni product today, you can keep using it,” the Xobni team said in a blog post.
The company stated that Xobni for BlackBerry and Smartr Contacts for Android are also no longer available for download officially. It will also be pulling out the Android App by the end of the day, according to a company spokesperson. Further, Xobni will not be accepting any more premium subscriptions like Xobni Pro, Xobni for Teams, the Xobni JIRA Gadget, etc.
Xobni also added that Smartr Inbox for Gmail and Smartr Contacts for iPhone are still available for download and are expected to function normally for existing users till July 2, 2014.
Xobni commented on the merger in a post, “The power within every Xobni product is that it responds to how you communicate… Every day you demonstrate who and what is important to you. That can benefit not just your inbox or smartphone, but the many services you use. Yahoo! gets that, and they want us to use our platform to make many Yahoo! services better for you.”
The Xobni Outlook add-in provides detailed information about a contact via the email ID, and through social media networks. Xobni has added this feature to new Smartr Contacts app for Android, and Smartr Inbox for Gmail. Both the apps have been recently launched in public beta versions and are available for free.
Yahoo has been on an acquisition mode with CEO Marissa Mayer at the helm. The company has recently bought Tumblr and Qwiki Video Sharing App.